Reviews from various genres, read at the speed of light.

Dear Sarina Bowen: should, god forbid, you do Google Alerts and read this review, THIS is the kind of thing you're good at. You don't need to write love stories about perfectly nice people without huge amounts of issues. You need conflict like THIS. You need to write stuff where you've got a whopping conflict and drama to figure out and work around. THIS IS YOUR JAM.

Jude Nickel is a car mechanic by trade who got hooked on prescription drugs in high school. He also got hooked on police chief's daughter/singer/"good girl" Sophie Haines, and they had a super passionate relationship even as he was getting more and more into drugs while she was at college. Three and a half years ago or so(?) Jude and Sophie's brother Gavin got into a car accident while high and Gavin died, and Jude did three years in prison for manslaughter and took up heroin while he was in there. After a stint in rehab, he got a job for a few months at the Shipley Farm, but now that that's run out, Jude is forced to move back to his shitty hometown with cops that hate him because working in his alcoholic dad's garage is the only way he can get a job. Plus he's trying to maintain sobriety while mostly alone. However, he makes friends with a priest at the same location where the NA meetings are being held, and it turns out that Sophie's a volunteer at the weekly dinners that are held that same night.

Sophie's been managing, but she hasn't been living the life Jude imagined for her. She gave up on the idea of professional singing, she's moved home to take care of her catatonic mother while finishing her college degree, and she's got a temporary part-time job as a hospital social worker in Montpelier. Basically her problem is her family--her mom used to be a dynamo but is now a walking zombie all the time. Her father was an asshole growing up and he still is one now. And frankly, Sophie doesn't seem to have any love lost for her dead brother, who was a jerk just like her father was. But she still loves the shit out of Jude and once they're in the same vicinity for very long, they're on each other like white on rice--and having to hide it from a town full of cops loyal to her dad. I probably would have figured their getting together again would have been more conflicted and rocky--but no, the author makes it work that the love didn't die even if someone else died and drugs were involved. Jude is holding on as best he can in a bad situation that's still better than what he was in before, and he does have his reservations about how he can manage to have a life with Sophie in the future. But Sophie's willing to give it a shot. You can definitely buy that this relationship can work out as long as Sophie eventually gets away from her family--this wouldn't have worked if she was close to those people. But that's hard to do when your dad makes it clear every day that the wrong kid died.

And then Sophie's dad introduces her to a young cop on his force that he's trying to fix her up with. This turns out to be a bad idea for dad, because Sophie befriends the cop (Rob Nelligan) and gets him to help her look at the police report of the incident--and a cop's daughter is gonna notice some whopping inconsistencies and missing information in that report. Sophie starts to think maybe Jude wasn't the driver that night, but finding out that information's going to put some lives at risk...During this whole story I kept thinking, "You guys have got to get out of town if you keep going down this hole!" I did feel sorry for the ah...collateral damage that happened to a few folks in this story. Between that and the sketchy guys who keep breaking into Jude's place to look for drugs, there's still a case going on and things have to get resolved somehow, though.

The book also uses friends very well. We've already got the Shipleys from the previous book helping to care for Jude (and Griffin does great backup at one point), but the priest character Father Peters is a total sweetie. And Denny, Sophie's coworker friend, is used really well. He starts out as Hopeless Crush Guy (a plot point that made me wince, but the book gets over that FAST, thank goodness), but he is a good friend to Sophie and is even very kind to Jude when Jude needs assistance--and let's just say the guy went above and beyond in a surprising way. This book kind of made me think that if she wants to continue the series past three books (or if the publisher lets her), she could bring back Rob Nelligan or even Denny as a lead, in addition to Zara.

Anyway, this book was amazeballs. I have certain standards for hugely epic that this book is a tiny bit short on given the subject matter, but it's close. And I'm saying this as someone who isn't particularly into drug plots--I ate this up like candy. So, four and a half stars. Blew me away.

This is a new series for the author, based in Vermont and taking place around the Shipley Farm rather than anything sports-related. I generally liked it, but it did not feel like it had the plot sizzle of well, pretty much almost anything else of hers I've read.

However...Griff and Audrey are pretty much perfectly nice, normal people without a lot of drama going on, and between that and well, the characters being into certain things in life a lot more than I am, I was not so into this book as I have been others. Griff's backstory boils down to: "had a crush on Audrey at college, was going to be a football player and then his dad died so he quit to run the family farm, which he is generally fine about." Audrey's backstory actually sounds pretty painful--she was raised by a rich perfectionist man-hating businesswoman who wanted a clone of herself, except Audrey wasn't good at school and flunked out of two colleges, liked boys, and got cut off financially. However, Audrey pulled herself together nicely, got herself through culinary school, and at this point is so used to what her mom is like and not getting along with her that when she casually mentions something horrible her mom did to her in conversation, she doesn't even notice when the rest of the dinner table is dropping their jaws in horror. She's fine, thanks.

So Griff and Audrey had a few hookups in college, and then Griff graduated and Audrey flunked out and it's been around five years since they last saw each other. Audrey is currently a shitty peon slaving away for the Boston Premier Group, doing their bidding and being borderline-about-to-be-fired all the time, in hopes that she can last long enough there to be allowed to pitch her own restaurant idea. She gets told that now she has to drive around to various Vermont farms and get farm products for BPG....at what turns out to be ridiculously unrealistically cheap prices, something she had no idea about. And when her first stop is Griffin Shipley's family farm, he most certainly does enlighten her on this topic. Awkward. But anyway, the hormones between them are as hot and heavy as they ever were, so the two of them end up dating/boning quite a lot whenever Audrey's in town for work.

There's a lot about farming, cows, slaughtering animals (Griffin thinks Audrey will be grossed out watching that and instead she's all, don't you dare get rid of the cheek meat!), Audrey making delicious meals for the Shipley family and employees and shopping for work, and boning. I'll be honest with you: I'm not into cooking or farming, so the loving details about those things are probably lost on me. If you are into those subjects, though, you'll probably get deep pleasure from reading about them. There's not a lot of major conflict going on here either. Audrey befriends Griffin's grumpy former fuckbuddy (though Zara sounds like an interesting lady and if she ever gets a book, I'd be interested), we wait around for Audrey to either get fired or quit BPG because they are horrible and odds are she isn't going to make it long enough to get to pitch a restaurant idea, and there's a tiny bit of drama about how Griff wants Audrey on the farm but doesn't want to interfere with her getting-a-restaurant dream. Audrey's mom kinda miraculously gets over her issues when Audrey calls her about a business matter.

So overall...don't get me wrong, they're nice people, they have good sexytimes together, they seem to have fun, and the Shipley family is a bunch of nice people anyone would want to be adopted by. That's including the farmhands Jude and Zachariah, who shall be the heroes of the other books in the series. Happily, those guys have super interesting/dramatic backstories, so that should liven things up when I get to them. But overall, I found myself kinda slowly meandering through the book instead of devouring it quickly. It's okay, it's sweet and fun enough, but didn't blow my mind. I guess I need more complications in my heroes and heroines to get more interested.

Previous book here--this is a new spinoff series from The Ivy Years, starting a few years after The Fifteenth Minute and features DJ's brother Leo.

Leo Trevi and Georgia Worthington found true love in high school and were whoppingly in love and whooping it up all over the place for three years--until Georgia got raped during an out of state spring trip. Even though Leo was an awesome boyfriend during that time, Georgia kind of felt like her issues had killed the relationship, leading her to break up with him upon graduation. Six years later, neither of them have found anyone else and are secretly still pining for each other.

Georgia works as the interim publicist for the Brooklyn Bruisers, a new hockey team bought up by a tech genius. She has an interesting time of it when (a) her hockey coach dad Karl gets hired by the same team, and (b) Leo is added to the team, very much against her dad's wishes. (It's not clear for quite some time why Karl has a whopping grudge against Leo, but man, it's kinda ugly.) Poor Leo has possibly one of the worst rookie first months of all time, between a coach that hates him and isn't afraid to get physical about it, his ex-girlfriend being on the scene, and saying the wrong thing in front of a hot mic pointing out that last bit. Leo has very good reasons to suspect he's going to get traded at the first opportunity, about a month from now. Either way, it'd behoove both of them to attempt to be on their best behavior in public...but the hormones get going, the love is flowing, and I'm going to stop the terrible rhymes, but holding back just isn't gonna happen here, even if Georgia's worried about losing him again.

This is a very schmoopy, adorable novel. It handles the back story issues well and delicately but not too delicately, and navigates the hockey world and its quirks well. I liked Leo and Georgia quite a lot and it was a very sweet read. So, four stars.

This one features Lennon and takes place a few months after his motorcycle incident, following up on the "what's up with Lennon and we are seriously worried about him right now" theme that was going on in Relent. The band is about to go on an abbreviated European tour, and naturally the brothers are worried about how Lennon is going to hold up. Lennon is desperate for some distraction and is ready to go, even if he hasn't sorted out all of his issues in therapy yet and the like. He hits it off with Haylee, the guitarist/lead singer of Intrigue, their opening act band, presumably because both of them recognize something "broken" in each other and understand what that's like.

Haylee's band was doing really well for themselves until she got kidnapped at gunpoint by a stalker, and she's been PTSD'ing/self-medicating/taking prescription stuff off and on since then. This is the band's second chance and she doesn't want to waste it, but periodically she's having her own issues, and worries that getting into a relationship may not be the best thing given her circumstances--and that's not even knowing all that's going on with Lennon. The two of them get closer despite themselves (and theoretically trying not to hop into a relationship), but things start coming to a head when Haylee's mother blabs things to the press and Lennon gets up the nerve to visit his mother in Europe and finally starts remembering what he's been blocking out of his head since he was a kid. I was right in assuming his issues had something to do with her, and while I won't spoil here, let's just say it's probably not as bad as your imagination may be telling you right now so don't worry about trigger warning things. But at any rate, Lennon's remembering the truth is a shocker to his brothers, and presumably will be gotten into in a final series book about all the brothers that the author promises in another year-ish or so.

I whipped through reading this book in a few hours and enjoyed it as much as the rest of them. I think the mental health issues and the balance of them was handled well, Haylee and Lennon hit it off very well, and I also enjoyed everyone hanging out together, as usual. Paige takes them to excellent places, Daisy does a fun prank, Cash shows moments of growth and improvement, and the members of Intrigue fit in well with this bunch. And I always enjoy the snark that everyone shows toward each other while still being affectionate, though I think the topper on that in this book is Daisy being all, yeah, I love my boyfriend but sometimes I really wish we could do something besides watching extreme fishing videos :p

Famous rock star Tommy Stiles's lawyers are going through his next prenup--he's getting ready to wed pregnant fiancee #4--when they unexpectedly discover that 38 years ago when he was 19, he knocked up a 39-year-old. Wait, whaaaaat? The aforementioned lady was an oceanographer who decided to have the kid on her own without ever mentioning it. Tommy's a family man--he's already got six kids + the one in utero even before this that he knew about--and he's delighted to find out he has another kid and is chomping at the bit to meet her. However, his lawyer/foster kid/best friend's kid/band member(!) Finn tries to get him to calm the hell down and give it some time, and why don't we check out the situation first by say, ordering a cake from the woman? She does own a bakery and do custom cake designs, after all.

Hayley Maitland Goldstein has been living a mostly normal life, except for the part where her ex-husband is a moneygrubbing skeezebucket and likely criminal. She's raising their daughter Lizzie and has no idea why the heck a representative of a famous guy would drive 4 hours to her New Jersey bakery to order a custom drum set cake (or for that matter, why the famous guy will give her a phone call), and kinda smells a rat, but it's going to be a while before she can get a straight answer out of anybody. Meanwhile, Hayley ends up hitting it off with Finn big time, and all the while Finn is dying to tell her what's going on but really can't/shouldn't drop that bomb without some verification. When Hayley's mother Jane plans on coming to town to drop some truth bombs of her own around the time of the party, that should be....surprising, to say the least.

I really enjoyed the heck out of this book and read through it very quickly. Tommy Stiles is a pretty adorable rock star, and for all his varying kids and ex-wives and whatnot, genuinely comes off as a decent guy even as you kind of want to roll your eyes that he's marrying a 24-year-old. Hayley and her daughter Lizzie and Finn are all nice folks. And while it does take quite a while for Hayley to finally find out what's going on--in the most publicly embarrassing way possible, really-- once she finally finds out people manage to mesh well together and figure things out. Overall, I just thought everyone in it (except the ex-husband, for obvious reasons) was sweet and nice and well meaning and fun to read about. So, four stars.

It's been a long time since I read the beginning of the Princess Mia series, but like other series of late, the author's bringing her back for an adult take on her life. For those of you who didn't read the series, Mia Thermopolis was the bastard child of the Prince of Genovia and was pretty much kept in the dark as to her father's princedom until after he survived a bout with cancer and was no longer fertile.. which made her suddenly a legit princess in her teens because otherwise there's be no heir.

"But if you think about it, I have no real problems. Aside from my obviously annoying housing situation, my mentally disturbed family, and the fact that a stalker says he wants to kill me."

As an adult, Mia's still with her high school boyfriend Michael and still friends with her high school friends who knew her before she was royal. She's getting stalked and hiding out in the Genovian embassy in NYC, her father had a little race car incident and is having some kind of nervous breakdown, and she keeps compulsively checking her royal popularity ranking on the Internet. Girl, stop doing that.

As you figured out from the title, Michael finally proposes to Mia and it's time for a royal wedding...or, you know, distraction from the family scandals. Like her dad's impending nervous breakdown...or the fact that his sperm had one last gasp 12 years ago and Mia has a black sister nobody knew about. Upon discovering this fact--and that sister Olivia's being raised by a jerk aunt and uncle who want to haul her off to a country that's shitty for women--Mia literally jaunts off in a limo to her rescue. Olivia, however, takes this a lot better than you'd think. Go figure.

This is definitely in the "fun fluff" category of reading. It's a bit goofy and silly and while I'll admit the end was a bit much for me all at once (let's say Mia is surprised twice), it's the sort of thing fans would probably like. It wasn't a monumental book for me, but a fun enough time. So, three stars.

Quote Corner:

Mia, comparing herself to her elderly cat Fat Louie: "Of course I don't revenge-poop on things when I don't get my own way."

"Michael and I are an anomaly. Hardly anyone stays together forever with their first significant other, except maybe in YA novels. And usually when they do, it's because he's a vampire or a werewolf or owns a beautiful estate called Pemberley or something." -Mia

Mia comes from a long line of warrior princesses. Princess Rosagunde strangled her husband in his sleep with her braid, which got her named ruler of her village. (Princess Mathilde smashed her cheating fiance's furniture with a battle ax, then rode off with his hunting dogs, servants, and horses. Her own grandmother Clarisse sued her ex fiance for the cost of her new wardrobe when she found out he was married.

"The first rule of being a royal is that you have to learn to take a joke." "The first rule of jokes is that they have to be funny." -Mia and Michael

"Seriously, if my life were one of those romance novels with a love triangle, Lars and Michael would be the sexy paranormal alpha males, but the two of them would be in love with each other and just ignore me." -Mia

"Why do you think your father would be so ashamed of loving a spider man?" -Clarisse

"Famous? Being famous isn't a job! Then I realized that it is. Being famous is very hard work, but it's also empowering, because you have influence over a large number of people and can do amazing things with that power. And it doesn't even matter anymore how you happen to come by that fame, singing or dancing or posting a sex tape on the Internet or finding out that you're a princess. It's what you do with your fame that matters." -Mia

"If I recall correctly, when you were a tween, you would walk around with a cat stuffed down your pants while my sister filmed you for her public-access TV show." -Michael

"I guess that's what brides--kind of like princesses--are for. We might think we're in charge, but when all is said and done, our main purpose is to give people something to admire, and also to make them feel better about the world." -Mia

"And besides, that school obviously isn't a very good one if it can't handle a young boy's perfectly normal interest in flatulence." -Mia's dad

The word "twunt" is used. and sadly, they don't finish the "that's a cross between a--" definition.

"The two rivals for Amalia's affection, "Mick" and "Jared," come from enemy factions. Jared is blond and warmly creative, whereas Mick has dark hair and is more coldly analytical. Amalia seems to be leaning more toward Jared. But none of it really matters since they're all dying of radiation poisoning." --Mia on the plot of her annoying ex's novel

"Any day that begins with you trying on wedding dresses and ends with your fiance beating up your ex-boyfriend is a good one, right?" -Mia

"Your dad did it! He finally impressed your mom! And he didn't have to injure himself in a high-risk sport to do it!" "Yeah, right. All Dad ended up having to do to win my mom's admiration was alienate his own country's populace by hiding a love child for twelve years in a small town just off the New Jersey Turnpike. Easy!" -Tina and MIa

"In addition to the usual antiroyalists, anarchists, misogynists, and general wackos, we've now acquired a few white supremacists and even some anti-Semites (Michael says he's very proud he was finally able to bring something to the family, even if it's only a hate group)." -Mia

"Reader, I married him. Ha! I've always wanted to write that!" -Mia

"I read J.RR.Tolkein's Lord of the Rings series when I was pregnant with you. I've always wondered if that's the reason you turned out the way you have." -Mia's mom

This is a sweet and slightly paranormal village soap opera kind of story, kinda like reading Alice Hoffman or Sarah Addison Allen books. I think the best way I can attempt to explain the book is to give a character rundown.

Etta: runs the title shop and sews rather enchanted dresses that give the wearer an emotional boost of confidence and sexy when she sews a little star into the cothes. Fifty years ago she fell in love with a priest and still misses him to this day.

Father Sebastian: Etta's priestly love who still misses her.

Cora: Etta's scientist granddaughter who shut off her emotions after the deaths of her scientist parents many years ago. She's been way too closed off to notice the childhood pal who's been pining after her for years. After Etta works some magic on her, Cora starts focusing on the deaths of her parents and whether or not they were murdered.

Henry: a detective with an inner lie detector who helps Cora investigate.

Francesca: Henry's ex-wife who still loves him--so why did she divorce him?

Walt: Cora's aforementioned pining childhood friend, who hits his limit after Cora rebuffs him and decides to date someone else. He has a side gig as ""The Night Reader" on a radio show that gets him a lot of fan mail that he usually ignores, and he starts dating a fan.

Milly: The fan that Walt dates: she's a lonely widow dying for another husband and children. Too bad for her this book makes it clear that Walt's destined for another.

Dylan: Walt's radio station boss who decides to answer his fan mail for him and falls for Milly in a Cyrano-sort of way. (Which made me go, GEEZ, DUDE, THIS IS A TERRIBLE IDEA.)

I had a fun time reading this, though there were the occasional plot elements that made me go "Oh nooooo" (namely, Dylan's pen palling and Milly's considering "oopsing" Walt if they ever have sex). One plot revelation surprised me even though I suspect it shouldn't have. And the ending line...wow, that was also a surprise. Generally speaking, the characters are sweet to read and I liked the quiet magic aspects of the book, particularly Etta's sewing, which makes me want to put stars in my clothes now.

On the other hand, I felt really sorry for Milly and winced pretty much every time she was on stage, and I wasn't emotionally involved in the idea of getting Cora and Walt together because they don't spend much time together for me to think they are MFEO as personalities. Okay, fine, they knew each other as kids, but what makes them soulmates now? I don't exactly see them together enough to sell me on them, especially since Cora spends most of the book now that her feelings are "on" again looking for her parents and what happened there, NOT with Walt, and the little I saw of them together before that wasn't winning me over. We see a lot more of Milly and Walt together. Hell, I just wished Walt would go for Milly already and get over Cora, but nope. There's a ton of "I'm going to confess my love but there you are with someone else" moments that were exasperating the more they went on. Oh, and "I want them to have a million babies!"--a remark made several times--was kinda making me gag.

(Admittedly, I'm childfree and thus not sold on proof of Our Love involving proof of babies, but really: do you want your favorite couples to have huge numbers of kids and be worn out and exhausted and not swooning in love with each other because they're too tired for that? Really? Why not just stick to two or three? But I digress....)

I think I'm going to give this three and a half stars. It's a pretty good sweet soap opera read, even if I was not quite so into the romancing and how it was handled.

Ooooh, this is a fun one. Like many others who have read it, I started it and pretty much plowed on through (draining the device I read it on in an hour) as fasst as possible. If you like Beatrice and Benedick-type couples, this is for you.

Lainie Graham isn't in the world's most fun work situation right now. She's in a West End play in London with her most recent ex, Will, who she's forced to be in love with every night even though he was a complete arse to her when dumping her (i.e. she read about it in the media). As for their third costar, Richard Troy, well, he's getting news all over the place for having public temper tantrums. Somehow this leads to the bright idea of play management/agents/publicity people to make Lainie and Richard date for publicity reasons--dating good girl, charity fundraising Lainie could only help his i'mage at this point. Richard's campaigning for a political office in the arts at the moment and Lainie manages to finagle a donation to her favorite charity if she agrees to it.

Naturally they start out frosty--Richard is a tall dark rich handsome snarker, but with a caustic way of speaking and he doesn't suffer fools like salyy, Will, and previously ignored Lainie for her taste in men. Lainie, on the other hand, will dish it right back to him and even kind of enjoys thar sort of insult war, which impresses Richard. The author does a great job of having them get to gradually know each other, reveal feelings and secrets, and have them be there for each other when needed, and that's lovely. Great build, great fun to read. Their dynamic is impressive--it's one where Lainie can honesty say something along the lines of "you're a great actor, but let's face it, that play you were up for was mediocre for you, so what happened?" and pull it off. She manages to be super painful blunt and complimentary at once, which is amazing. There's also an adorable scene where she digs up a recording of Richard doing "Grease" in college--and to be fair to him, she also brings along her own teenage version of "Oklahoma" for equal fun/humiliation. Also adorable: Richard being the "little spoon" in the bathtub.

I was enjoying it so much that at a certain point--you know how these books go, you gotta have some kind of third act breakup drama--and I was all, "man, I just don't want to see them go through that." But even that sort of thing is done well--Lainie has an "oops" moment that does some damage to Richard, and she does her damndest to make up for it and stick by him and be all, "Nope, this isn't the end and this is fixable." Lainie is an emotional badass. As for Richard, he is naturally cranky (you would be too if you were him), but he has hidden depths and even kindness most people don't see. It was very sweet and fun and I loved reading about these people. I highly recommend it. Four stars!

At the beginning of the book, we're told that three divorced ladies who call themselves "The Three Blonde Mice" are going on a cruise, and one of their exes has hired a hit man. But which one?

Our narrator/one of the mice is Elaine, a lady who's really into her career, wasn't that into her ex but made sure she did her ex's business some damage, and she's never really been all that goony over any guy. The other mice are Jackie, who's feuding with her ex/business partner and is looking for another guy, and Pat, who just really wants to get back together with her ex but starts dating someone else on the ship anyway. They all meet eligible guys, but Elaine is particularly and unexpectedly blown away by Sam Peck--and vice versa. But after half-hearing a miscalled ship-to-shore call, she figures out that there's a hit man on the ship-and of course, nobody believes her. Who's the target? And when she finds out Sam's not exactly who she thought he was....

Anyway, this is kind of a fun fluff novel. I did enjoy Elaine's unexpected romance. The mystery is a bit rushed at the end, but overall it's generally entertaining, if not all that super memorable after reading it. So, three and a half stars.

This one was recommended to me by my shrink. Even though it involves stalking, which made me have some pause, she said it was all right. And it was.

Ellen is a 35-year-old Aussie who's starting to date Patrick, a widower with a young son and a stalker ex-girlfriend named Saskia. Most people would be disturbed that he has a stalker, but Ellen is actually kind of intrigued by the idea. I did like how we start out meeting Ellen by Patrick being all, "I have some bad news" and Ellen starts immediately expecting to be dumped on date four and rearranging her expectations if he did it and thinking how she'll cope. This goes on for pages (perhaps a bit much), but as a permanently single chick I kind of liked her saying that, even if it's a big long after awhile. Anyway, back to the stalker: Ellen is rather intrigued at Saskia's passion because Ellen has never been that passionate of a person herself.

The narration alternates between focusing on Ellen in the third person...and Saskia the stalker in first person, because what Ellen doesn't know is that Saskia is now a patient of hers. (Which one is eventually revealed, I didn't guess it.) Saskia was essentially his son's foster mom for years and Patrick dumped her out of the blue and she was freaking devastated...and focuses on him even though she kinda knows it's bad--and at the same time she's operating under a certain self-delusion. I have to say that the author does an excellent job of portraying Saskia's mental state and why she's acting like she is and how she mentally slips into happy delusions that people will be happy to see her if she breaks into their house. She also kinda seems friendly in her own brain towards Ellen, thinking that to some degree she could help her. "You Oughta Know" sums her mental state up pretty well, especially the bits where she doesn't want to be just thrown away. She feels like without Patrick and his family (which threw her out), she has nothing but her job left.

I do not love Patrick. To be fair, this book and situation aren't putting him at his best, but I still don't think the guy's awesome. He's merely tolerable at best to me.

After Ellen starts to head towards Typical Happily-Ever-After Land for a single lady over 30--which is to say she comes up pregnant and engaged pretty quick, and even the dad she never knew comes into her life--she starts to wonder why the hell she isn't happy like you'd think she'd be. Instead, she's annoyed at Patrick's quirks when moving in, feels jealous of his love towards his dead wife--isn't it a bit obsessive to visit her parents and her grave every month?--and then there's Saskia, now that Ellen's found out who she is. Ellen can't help but think that Saskia is the only one who'd understand how she feels about the dead wife, at least.

And then there's Ellen's job, which is handled in thoughtful ways. There's pain management (Saskia's issue in multiple ways), there's figuring out what you really want in life (client Rosie is engaged but doesn't want to be), there's the patients that Ellen gets the idea to hypnotically prime to at least try dating each other, which is a bit ethically dubious... and then there's Ellen's hypnotizing Patrick to go to sleep, which leads her to some uncomfortable revelations and even more ethical dubiousness. And when Rosie's man finds out about this, he threatens to put Ellen out of business.

Things get rocky, but they work out in the end, even for Saskia. Go figure. It's a nice story. Odd but nice. So overall I give it four stars.